Tougher penalties for fleeing drivers

Drivers fleeing police have injured dozens of innocent bystanders and police officers officers, a new report shows, amid a proposal for harsher consequences.

A crackdown on fleeing drivers is proposed in a Bill introduced to Parliament this week by Transport Minister Simon Bridges, and includes penalties of up to two years’ disqualification from driving for failing to stop for police.

The move comes as new Ministry of Transport figures show 582 people were injured by fleeing drivers in the past five years. Of those. 82 were innocent bystanders and 51 were police officers.

You need more than disqualification. Those who flee are probably disqualified anyway.

The bill also proposes to strengthen courts’ powers to confiscate fleeing drivers’ vehicles permanently if they offend twice within four years.

A good idea. But how about a short sharp punishment. You flee, and you automatically have at least a week in jail.

Victoria University criminologist Professor John Pratt has questioned the logic of imposing harsher penalties – when the point of fleeing police is generally to avoid punishment.

By this logic there should be no penalty at all.

“I don’t think it will have much effect on these particular cases because people who do these sorts of things for the most part are likely to be young men who don’t have much to lose in the first place.”

Pratt suggested making it harder to steal cars and preventing problem drivers from getting behind the wheel in the first place was likely to be more effective.

fisho

peterwn

Late model cars are already hard to steal so the issue becomes whether earlier model cars which are ‘attractive’ to thieves should be retrofitted with extra security. All this means little however if the keys are left in the car or the offender manages to find the keys.

cmm

The thing to do is to change it from a pleasant experience like it is currently ( a bit of a rush, some mana with the mates and no real consequences) to an unpleasant experience (car gone, stuck in prison for the week end or some such).

In the old days it would have been a caning: which, sharp and unpleasant.

Jim

Apologies. I was benchmarking my suggestion against Pratt’s “…making it harder to steal cars and preventing problem drivers from getting behind the wheel in the first place was likely to be more effective.”

peterwn

Big problem with remote stopping is a malfunction could cause a very serious accident. Legitimately triggering remote stopping would need to be done carefully ie vehicle behind would need to be stopped to avoid similar consequences. Some hire purchase companies fit remote stopping devices AFAIK but these would prevent a stopped vehicle being restarted rather than stopping a vehicle in its tracks. Driverless cars of the future would be capable of being remote stopped safely since when triggered the car will automatically be brought to a stop in a safe way and off the road.

dave_c_

Along with any proposed additional penalties, I would like to see a thorough (transparent) assessment and proposed changes to the way Police conduct such chases.
There appear to be no end of instances where a Police chase ends up going bad. This is not good enough. I personally don’t care is the fleer dies, but it’s the innocent casualties who deserve better.

dave_c_

I disagree – Your argument is the lazy option. Tail wagging the dog.
We all have to suffer because a minority cannot be controlled. This indicates to me that both the government and Police are devoid of implementing ways of addressing the root cause.
However, if you’re happy that the lazy option will be rolled out ever time there is such an outcry over some issue, then you’re welcome.

JamesP

The maximum penalty needs to increase a lot. It needs to have 6 months mandatory disqaulification since I would argue it is more dangerous than drink driving which has this penalty. Most drink drivers don’t crash and are only found during routine stops. Jail needs to be an option (fine only at the moment). Once the law is changed the judges need to be sent a message to use the new sentencing options.

A civil society doesn’t base punishments around encouraging criminals to do the right thing. The punishment is based on how seriously society views the offence. Fleeing police is serious not only because it is dangerous but because it is a big middle finger to the law / justice.

Pratt suggested making it harder to steal cars and preventing problem drivers from getting behind the wheel in the first place was likely to be more effective.

This from a guy who gets paid a fat salary to actually think about this stuff? How’s minimum-wage bozo going to make his 20-year-old car harder to steal? Put it up on blocks when he parks it?

As for preventing problem drivers getting behind the wheel, it’s about as helpful as suggesting that we could reduce illness by preventing viruses from infecting people. Gosh, yes, that’s so true, thanks for suggesting it, we’ll get right onto that as soon as you come up with the mechanism for how it would work…

It’s horrifying to think students are leaving university having been taught by this wazzock – they’ll be fonts of unhelpful advice for their future employers.

MCos

Reading all these comments its apparent there is no easy answer. At least not on the punishment side of the equation. I believe police have already toned down their own aggressive pursuit tactics over the years.
That leaves the deplorable attitude of villains and I don’t know there’s much can be done about that, no matter how much common sense is applied.

simonway

Victoria University criminologist Professor John Pratt has questioned the logic of imposing harsher penalties – when the point of fleeing police is generally to avoid punishment.

By this logic there should be no penalty at all.

He’s just saying that, since the people who flee police are only fleeing in the first police so that they don’t get in trouble, making it so that they get in trouble probably isn’t going to stop them. They were already going to get in trouble anyway.

A sober and reasoned person might think, “I’ll only be making it worse for myself if I run,” and that sort of person might be deterred by these additional penalties, but that sort of person isn’t going to be fleeing police in the first place.

When you talk about people who flee police, you’re talking about impulsive people who don’t think everything through and who don’t tend to make very good decisions. So additional punishments like this probably won’t factor in to their decision-making at all.

And that means that it won’t have an effect on the number of people who are injured when this happens, which is an important figure that we should be looking to reduce. The article opens by talking about these injuries, and my first concern is, “Wow, how can we stop that from happening?” That’s why I’m not overly impressed with a proposal that doesn’t seem like it will really do anything to stop it happening.

starboard

Build more prisons, catch them , lock ’em up..minimum term 12 months and it goes up from there depending on how much fuckwittery driving was involved.. Kill someone while running from the Police..Life, with no parole.